Waiting sucks: “True Blood” season 3 previews debut

Waiting does indeed “suck,” but thankfully we don’t have to twiddle our thumbs for much longer. On June 19, the fangs will be out! Vampire Eric, Tara, Sam, Sookie and co. are back for the third season of HBO’s True Blood.

The network released some previews but they are more a tease than anything. Here’s what I can tell from watching the 3-second short clips they’ve posted to HBO.com:

Tara (Rutina Wesley), Sookie’s hot, smart-cracking BFF gets herself into trouble. Hmm, where have I seen this before?

Sam (Sam Trammell), Sookie’s faithful shape-shifter friend, has a gun pointed at him as he is sleeping in his car. Am I having deja-vu?

Hot vampire Eric (Alexander Skarsgard), is getting attacked and may or may not have been shot. So, really, not much of anything to go by there.

While, so far, there haven’t been any previews featuring Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis) I was able to find out that he’ll be getting a fair amount of screen time (and a boyfriend!) in season 3. If I had it my way, it would be the Lafayette show and we could just bathe in his fabulousity for an hour instead of having to listen to Sookie whine.

After a little bit of research, I am excited to tell you about Eric’s new love interest: Natasha Alam will be playing Yvetta, a dancer at club Fangtasia. Ho ho ho, and it’s Christmas in June!

Other new cast members include Dawn Olivieri as Janice Herveaux, Metlotte’s new waitress and Joe Manganiello as Alcide.

Since creator Alan Ball hasn’t followed the original novels very closely, it’s hard to know where he’ll go with this season. Do you have any predictions? More importantly, what would you like to see happen?